I have looked at too many paint colors... kitchen update
I have been looking at and analyzing paint colors for so long, I feel paint paralyzed. We are updating our kitchen and have already installed countertops (Ceasarstone Frosty Carrina) and chosen our backsplash (see pic below). The idea has been to paint our orange oak cabinets a shade of gray. Our house was completely beige (PPG Dusty Trail), ceiling to floor, when we moved in. While we’ve updated bedrooms and office with color (warm muddy blues and greens) and the ceiling (white), we want to keep the large common areas neutral. The kitchen is partially open to a large living room so they share walls. I am looking for warm, neutral, light to medium tone paint colors for an inviting, comfortable and calm setting. I don’t mind a combo of beige and gray. These common areas get northwestern light, and there is a lot of greenery outside the windows. The floors have been updated to a neutral wood throughout, except for kitchen which is still tile.
i‘ve had SW Mindful Gray in mind for the kitchen cabinets, although there are so many grays so I’m not sure. It’s hard to get an actual idea from pictures online, and I’ll be getting swatches from our cabinet painter. Any other gray suggestions for comparison? I’m also struggling to figure out what wall color to choose if the cabinet color doesn’t look right with Dusty Trail. We are open to 2 wall colors (to separate kitchen from living room) if 1 color can’t work for the whole space. White cabinets won’t work for my family.
edited to add pic of wall color and flooring (dusty trail in natural light).
Comments (18)
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Comments (18)From the inside, paneled walls; from the outside, dark rooms: You could panel the interior walls and add a hinged, paneled, hidden "door" over the locations of the windows you want to cover (so you could still access the covered windows, perhaps avoiding problems w/any building/fire/safety codes). You could add matching mini blinds within the window frame of ALL your windows, specifically including the windows to be covered, AND paint (flat black) the side of the paneling that would be visible from the exterior of the home via the covered window(s). Afterthoughts: To add more insulation at the covered windows, you could use insulation board, glued inside the "door" over the hidden windows and paint that flat back.) The doors, which would, of course, open outward into the room, could be kept closed by magnetic cabinet door latches -- the kind you push inward to click them open. ....See MoreToo many Interior Paint Colors for open(ish) floor plan?
Comments (9)I don't think it's too many colors. You have framed openings and sightlines from one room to another. That means the colors need to coordinate, definitely, but they don't all need to be the same. My living room and dining room are separated by a 6 foot opening, and I use the same basic palette in both rooms but mix up which color dominates in each room. My living room has robin's egg blue walls while the dining room walls are chocolate brown. The blue is picked up in the DR curtains; the brown is picked up in the wood furniture in the LR. But since you are choosing all grays, I will add that my appreciation of variation in grays is limited, so if I were doing all the rooms in gray, my default would be to use the same gray in all the rooms (unless it had an unpleasant color shift in rooms with different light)....See Moretoo many wood colors- which do I paint?
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Comments (34)@sheloveslayouts If you just use a lumens/sf calculation for general ambient lighting and stop there, the shortcomings become evident in a kitchen. Let's say you have a common 15'x20' kitchen, where 8'x15' of that is carved out for a Breakfast table. We'll use 30fc (footcandles) that IES calls for kitchen sink and stove. 300sf x 30fc = 9000 lumens If you choose a 6" recessed can @1200 lumens = 8 cans. In order to achieve the sustained 30fc of your calculation, the lights have to be evenly spread in a grid. So in a 15'x20' space that means 2 rows with 5' between fixtures one way, 4' the other. But that places the fixtures in the aisles, where you shadow counters when tasking, doesn't line up with appropriate task centers (e.g. sink, ref, center of 36" wide upper cabinet, etc), and does not center over the breakfast table on one side of the room. Also, IEC wants 50fc for kitchen prep counters, 20fc for Dining, and 5fc for floors. The straight calculation of 30fc didn't account for those varied numbers. So to alleviate those discrepancies, you move those cans closer to the counters and center one over the table. But now you've created hot spots on cabinets and uneven lighting across the space from such a high-lumen fixture. Fine, so you move down to a 600 lumen fixture, which calculates to 15 total cans. Even more hot spots with overlapping throws and then lighting up the open floor. It just seems like the tail is wagging the dog. And we're not even getting into reflectivity (light loss factor), or that the mass of cabinets take up part of the sf in the equation, but still need some light between the massing (the counters). The biggest fail though, is lumens/sf alone doesn't address the most prominent feature in good residential lighting - mood and drama. When you think about lighting in a house, it is first task-oriented to a specific spot: light the vanity counter and your face; light the shower; light the book you are reading on the couch or bed, light the kitchen counter and island. Then accent things: the fireplace; a window seat; an art wall. You are not as concerned with lighting the floor in front of the couch; or the spot you stand in front of a vanity; or the between-cabinet aisles in a kitchen; or the footboard of a bed. And since there are many doorways, windows, furnishings, and wall or ceiling jogs that affect those tasks, lighting can be influenced by the aesthetics of placement and the fixture style. This slight push/pull between function and aesthetics should not affect overall lighting, especially when lighting is layered - overhead, table set, wall mount, cabinet mount (above and below). However, you don't need to ditch lumens/sf for ambient lighting. In the old days, we did it in a non-scientific way: if a closet ceiling light wasn't bright enough to tell black from navy, you would switch the 60W 'bulb' to a 75W. Or if the bedroom central ceiling light seemed too harsh late at night, from 100W down to 60W. So the benefits of using lumen/sf is best illustrated in an example of a classroom or office building. If you have a 600sf room flexible for multiple desk arrangements, or 3000sf of general cubicles, then you can calculate total lumens on 40fc and get close to the number of fixtures and zero in on whether the spec of the fixture you chose is sufficient. But, you still have to verify the task lighting is acceptable by performing a photometric for footcandles at 30" desk height. And yet even after all that, at the end you adjust fixture locations based on hotspots from walls or coordinating with HVAC diffusers, footcandles be damned. So, even here when you appropriately start with a simple equation, task lighting still comes first, and aesthetics play a huge part. One thing to take away from the class/office example is those are large, open, flexible spaces with diffused lighting levels. But as the IEC footcandle guide notes, a residential Kitchen is varied in it's tasks. The island may serve both prep and dining. You may need 80fc as opposed to 30fc as you age. And, you are not worried about diffusing the light across open space, because I can say with certainty there's not going to be any space that is not taken up by cabinets, tables, something that has a function with a task lighting need. Bring in other attributes of a Kitchen, like the drama a hanging light provides lighting up a flower arrangement in the center of a table, and sticking to lumens/sf hinders your thinking. So what I find in residential lighting is it falls more on the creativity spectrum than engineering calcs (hence they are named lighting designers, you want a lighting engineer for precise stage lighting) - focus on the tasks - and ambient kind of falls into place. But you can back check with lumens/sf or use it to help in fixture selection. Sure, curveballs with high ceilings, soffits, vaults, galley layouts, and high-end cabinets, but for the most part residential lighting is a simple monster....See More
B P
3 years agoB P
3 years agodrblount10
3 years agoB P
3 years agoB P
3 years agoB P
3 years agoSwatches of Dorian Gray (left) and Mindful Gray (right). Both look better than I was anticipating! Mindful leans a little green and Dorian leans a little purple as I move them around the kitchen, but not always.
PROBeth H. :
3 years agolast modified: 3 years agomake sure you have some daylight bulbs in your kitchen. 4000K temp minimum. otherwise, it's going to throw some yellow onto that paint color.
Dorian does lean lavender, and it's right next to Mindful, so those are in the same color tone family.
Just for Grins, get a sample sample of Pale Oak, see if you like it.
Another Warm Gray I like is Smoke Embers. I used this color for my kitchen walls.
but on cabinets it's a very nice warm gray tone that plays well w/whites and wood.
this is a nice one too
edgecomb
have you seen this one? Revere Pewter?
Coventry gray
these grays all lean taupe. Some like Dorian, lean lavender. others, more blue=gray
B P thanked Beth H. :drblount10
2 years ago
Connie Stackhouse
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoMy DIY husband loves Behr paint from Home Depot, and we went with their Dolphin Fin. I also agonized and did several sample walls only fo find them looking blue, purple, or blah. Dolphin Fin is a true gray that doesn’t morph into other colors as the light changes, and it looks great with white trim.
Rebekah Gibbs